The girl, Neshama Spielman, and her family were some of the more than 170,000 people who have volunteered to sift the dirt since the program started in 2004.

“Since the Temple Mount has never been excavated, the ancient artifacts retrieved in the Sifting Project provide valuable and previously inaccessible information,” the project’s co-founder, Zachi Dvira, said in the blog. “The many categories of finds are among the largest and most varied ever found in Jerusalem.”

Neshama said in the blog that when she spotted the amulet she immediately thought it could be a big find.

“While I was sifting, I came across a piece of pottery that was different from others I had seen, and I immediately thought that maybe I had found something special,” she said. “It’s amazing to find something thousands of years old from ancient Egypt all the way here in Jerusalem. Celebrating Passover this year is going to be extra meaningful to me.”

There are undoubtedly millions of amazing artifacts from the ancient world that have served to shed light on the lives of our ancestors from many millennia ago. But some stand out for their uniqueness, their intrigue, or their ability to expand our knowledge about previously unknown aspects of our history. Here we feature ten such artifacts.

We have intentionally chosen not to feature well-known artifacts such as the Antikythera Mechanism, Baghdad Battery, Viking Sunstone and many other famous relics. Rather, we wished to highlight some lesser known but equally incredible artifacts from the ancient world.

LEWES, Del. — It was a blustery, rainy day when state park historian Jim Hall got the call from Cape Henlopen State Park maintenance staff.They’d discovered a big chunk of iron in a footpath to the beach.“I said ‘leave it alone until we can get it identified,’ ” he said.Cape Henlopen used to be an Army fort and anything unexpected needs to be treated with care, lest it possibly explode.So Hall told them to cover it with a piece of plywood and put some orange traffic cones around it.

The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to it and he thought the cones and plywood would make it look like a routine maintenance project. Also, he said, the weather was so bad as Hurricane Hermine was passing through, there weren’t many people visiting the park.It turned out that piece of metal was a relic from Cape Henlopen’s role as Fort Miles, part of the Army’s coastal defense network during WWII.

Mysterious lumps found at the bottom of a 7th-century burial ship have turned out to be bitumen from the Middle East. But how did they get there?

Sutton Hoo in East Anglia is one of the most important archaeological sites in England. The weapons, clothing and other objects buried in the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries show that trade networks in the 6th and 7th century reached as far away as Europe and Asia. Now new research conducted at the British Museum and University of Aberdeen reveals that trading even resulted in a solid form of oil known as bitumen making its way all the way to England from what is now Syria.

The graves at Sutton Hoo vary in size but one of them contains the “phantom” of a boat – the outline remains of a vessel probably used to ceremonially bury a warrior and many of his worldly goods, including his famous helmet. Alongside the body were found several small, centimetre-sized lumps of tar.

Art experts in Australia have found a rare paper banknote from the Ming Dynasty of Imperial China hidden inside an antique wooden sculpture that was being prepared for auction.

The Chinese characters on the crumpled banknote show that it was issued in the third year of the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty — or 1371 in the Western calendar. The inscriptions also warn would-be counterfeiters that they face the penalty of death by beheading.

The 645-year-old banknote was found hidden inside a wooden sculpture of the head of a “luohan,” a religious figure from Chinese Buddhism, that may once have stood in a family or public temple, said Paul Sumner, chief executive of Mossgreen’s Auctions in Melbourne, Australia, which discovered the note.

Art experts in Australia have found a rare paper banknote from the Ming Dynasty of Imperial China hidden inside an antique wooden sculpture that was being prepared for auction.

The Chinese characters on the crumpled banknote show that it was issued in the third year of the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty — or 1371 in the Western calendar. The inscriptions also warn would-be counterfeiters that they face the penalty of death by beheading.

The 645-year-old banknote was found hidden inside a wooden sculpture of the head of a “luohan,” a religious figure from Chinese Buddhism, that may once have stood in a family or public temple, said Paul Sumner, chief executive of Mossgreen’s Auctions in Melbourne, Australia, which discovered the note.